Orchid vs TUBADOUR III - Help me choose

I don’t have orchid but I have a big brother pagoda in balance mode and I find it very musical and natural to my ear , I can listen to my system for all days long without getting fatigue! Hope that help 

I just switched from a Prism Sound Callia DAC to the Orchid. However, the reason i switched was the ability to change out the stock chip (Philips TDA1451A R1) to the NOS Philips TDA 1541 S single crown. Before changing the chip to the S single crown the Orchid was on par with the Callia which at full retail is over twice as much but it upsamples, DSD and higher bit rates and typical bells and whistles except for MQA. The Callia also has a headphone amp with its own volume. Not a bad DAC at all but the Orchid sounded as well without changing the chip to Philips NOS... However, no upsampling with the Orchid and with the new chip i was easily pleased with my choice.. 
    

+1 for the Orchid. Just as described: detailed but musical and natural sounding, excellent stage width, depth, and localization. No weaknesses that I have found. 

@wal

Txs for the upgrade info

Hello to everyone of you guys. I feel like I need to clarify a few things about Tubadour III DAC compared to Orchid. I've been building audio for more than 30 yrs. I tried all the DAC chips possible. Out of that I picked TDA1541A S1 - Philips and AD1865N-K as the most musical and analog sounding ones. I liked best AD chip and second TDA chip. Of course this is my personal opinion and it's not necessary to agree with me. TDA is limited to 96khz, AD can do 192khz, if that matters to you. It is not a coincidence Audio Note uses AD chip. Orchid employs TDA chip, Tubadour - AD chip. Now the rest of the design is:

Orchid:
- one pice pc board
- one power supply
- op amps in IV conversion
- one tube, dual triode used as a buffer, not as gain stage
- Chinese coupling caps in the signal path
- USB - hard to tell from looking at the board

Tubadour:
- 4 pc boards, separate digital, separate analog and separate power supplies using MOSFET
- 2 separate power supplies for digital and analog sections
- tube IV 
- tube output gain stage
- Clarity caps CMR series, British made caps which are way better than Chinese caps. Base model Tubadour come with Clarity caps
- USB - Amanero upgraded with better clocks

Upgrades which improve the sound are Duelund caps and Z-foil resistors. Each Duelund cap is $238 before shipping
Z-foil resistors are around $13-22 a piece. 8 pieces total.

The whole design and architecture of Orchid are not meant for upgrades.
Tubadour is designed with all possible upgrades in mind.
Audio Mirror offer 2 weeks for audition and return.
These are my 2 cents.